In the End
by xgossamerstars
Summary: What was more blood, when tonight he was covered with it? KakaIru.


**Disclaimer:** I don't own Naruto, or you'd all have me killed after this.  
**A/N:** It was written at five in the morning. Don't flame me.

It was the time of night where it seems as if it has been night since the beginning of time, and will remain night until the end of the world. The darkness was so thick, so heavy, so all-encompassing that the wraithlike figure sprinting along the rooftops could barely feel the breath in his lungs. His steps were chakra-enhanced even though he had next to no chakra left with which to enhance them. Perhaps that was why he was stumbling, falling, and scrambling back to his feet every few yards; or perhaps that had something to do with the trail of dark blood he was leaving in his wake. He wasn't able to consider such things. The sky was moonless and cloudy and threatening a storm and he couldn't see where he was going at all. If there was no next building he would fall and he would die and he wouldn't even know it. He was depending solely on his instincts to take him to his destination, or was it his madness taking him there?

He took a great leap and landed on the bedroom windowsill of the apartment he had been fleeing toward. He did it in no very graceful way, landing on his feet but slipping so that he caught himself in the stomach with the raw edge of the brick sill. The pain was explosive and angry and somehow _red,_ but he simply used his cruel hands to heave himself through the glass. What was more blood, when tonight he was covered with it?

The tinkling crash woke the occupant of the bedroom so violently that he had two kunai in his hand before he was even fully awake. It was dark and black in his room, and the figure on the floor was nothing but a bit of paler darkness, but he recognized that paleness.

"Kakashi!" he dropped the kunai into the folds of the bed where he would later find one and sank to his knees next to the ANBU that had flown so uncerimoniously into his bedroom. Into _their _bedroom.

He had never seen more blood in his life, and he'd been with Kakashi for years now, so many years that they had both known better than to let Kakashi go back to the ANBU, Kakashi was thirty five years old and that was _old_ for a ninja, damn it, why had they ordered him back?!

"Iruka," Kakashi mumbled, his chest heaving erratically, blood trickling out of his blueish tinged lips. "Iruka, Iruka, Iruka..."

"I'm here, Kashi, I'm here, now let's go to the hospital, love, okay? They'll help you, Tsunade will help you, she can heal you, she can--" but a pair of fingers paler than the moonlight pressed against his dusky lips.

"No Iruka," Kakshi said, and coughed a little. Thick curds of half congealed blood sprayed Iruka's bare chest, but he hardly noticed, he was too busy untying the metal chest shield from Kakashi's body and ripping the shirt underneath in order to allow the jounin easier breathing.

"Don't say no, don't say no, Kakashi what happened please don't say no..." Iruka searched Kakashi's body all over for a wound, but there was no wound, there were _wounds_, so many he couldn't cound them all, so many that he had to wonder just how the fucking _hell _Kakashi had made it back to him. Kakashi's stomach was in ribbons and Iruka could see a _rib, _holy shit a rib was showing, the white bone was standing out amongst all that blood and gore and _carnage..._

"Reflexes," Kakashi panted. "Not what they used to be."

Iruka blanched as he saw the blood running out of Kakashi's ears, the pink tinge to his eyes, the trickle of blood from his nose. The lines in the jounin's face--lines that hadn't been there in years past--filled with blood until Kakashi's face was crisscrossed in miniature red rivers.

"Kakashi," Iruka swallowed hard, feeling as if his chest would explode from the grief. "Kakashi. Tell me what to do, my love, please...tell me how to help..."

Kakashi's turned pleading eyes on Iruka and said, "Hold...hold me...it's...I'm cold, 'Ruka."

Iruka obeyed. He took the bigger man's bloody body in his arms, in his lap, barely noticing the cold slick of blood that was slathering his chest as he did so. Kakashi's breathing was becoming worse, more spastic, and he was making odd choking sounds in his throat.

"Iruka...dying...this is dying..."

"Kakashi..._please_..."

"Iruka...do you...do you love me."

"I do, Kashi, I love you and I've always loved you..."

"Ah," Kakashi managed a weak smile, teeth tinged pink, "And I you."

Iruka waited, but this time when Kakashi's chest fell, it rose no more.

* * *

**A/N:** Yep, I killed Kakashi.


End file.
